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Author: zedster66

Finished Needle Felting

Finished Needle Felting

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I finished the needle felted piece I showed in my last blog post, and with some nice, bright weather I managed to get a good photos of it too!

I also finished another piece that I made using the same wools from Cathy which I showed in a wet felted piece previously:

The natural dyed fibres look far less ‘harsh’ than the acid dyed ones, I think. This is the same Turmeric dyed locks I used on the wet felted piece:

And, I don’t know what this was dyed with, but I think it’s Alpaca:

And one last needlefelted piece, I had forgotten all about this one! I was looking for a box to use and found one on top of a bookcase, it didn’t seem to have much in when I shook it, I was surprised when I opened it and saw this! I’m not sure if I’d considered it finished or just forgot all about it. I made it using scraps I’d saved, I think I got concerned about some of the threads which had got mixed up in the ‘wool for birds’ tub, after reading about how threads and long hair are responsible for pigeons losing their feet. It’s really soft and lightly needled:

I think I’ll be making felted soaps this week, we made one at the well being centre on Monday and I didn’t hate it! What are your plans for this week?

Some Needle Felting

Some Needle Felting

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We’ve been needlefelting at the Well-Being Centre. We started last week when there were just a few of us. One of the members liked this painting of ducks that is on the wall:

This was how far she’d got at the start of this week after doing a little of work after taking it home last week:

I think I’ve mentioned it’s a basement room with strange lights and 2 tiny windows, so the light isn’t great. I started an abstract piece using some of the dyed locks we have:

Some of them are commercial dyed BFL from World of Wool. This is a green one:

And, I think this is some dyed locks Lyn donated to us when we were first starting out:

These weren’t done at the centre, but one of the members brought them in. She was a really good sport about us laughing at her first attempt. And we weren’t being mean, we know it’s just at a stage where it looks comical:

She started on a different one, and liked how that progressed so did a little bit more:

I’m looking forward to seeing them finished! She also brought in a nuno sample she made a few weeks ago, at the same time I made mine, this is the blended 18.5 mic Merino side:

This is the front:

And this is a close up of the texture:

I’ll have updates of the needle felting next time 🙂

Uninformative Sample

Uninformative Sample

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This is probably going to be the least informative post I’ve ever done, but it has nice pics! A while ago, Cathy sent me some wool and fabric which she’d dyed with natural/plant dyes. I tend to be a little bit ‘messy’ and had misplaced them, but found them last weekend. I took them with me to the well-being centre and made a piece of felt with some English 56’s and lots of the wool and locks Cathy sent. Unfortunately, I forgot to write down what I used and left everything at the centre, so I will edit the post once I get the info! So, this is the finished piece with all the samples:

On a bit of an angle to see the textures more:

Closer along the surface to see the locks:

These grey locks looked really silvery:

This rose coloured wool had a nice rich colour:

I think this was Indigo dyed, I wish I’d used more of this:

I love the colour of these locks, I think they were Turmeric dyed:

How gorgeous are these, with the rich yellow and subtle orange, and gorgeous sheen?

I don’t think these locks had been dyed, I love ones like this, with small, tight crimp, they remind me of crinkle-cut chips!

I think these are the same as the Turmeric dyed ones, but natural:


Sorry, for the complete lack of info! But I hope you enjoyed the pics 🙂 One thing I can tell you is that none of the wools I used lost any colour.

Inspiration

Inspiration

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I was running out of ideas for a blog post since I haven’t had a chance to make or do anything this week, and Ruth suggested an Inspiration post. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, but actually had a couple of dry and even briefly sunny days so I went out in the garden to get some inspiration. I was hoping for a variety of colours and textures, but after a 3 1/2 month long heatwave, brown is the dominant colour in the garden! The first thing which caught my eye was a large teasel plant. The leaves at the base were really interesting:

This one has a spider on it too:

I got a photo of a whole seed head:

And a close up of the spiky edge:

One plant which does have some nice new growth is a large sedum I have. I rescued this from a house at the end of the street about 20 years ago when the previous owners moved out!

This has more interesting colours, the whole top will flower then turn deep red:

I don’t even remember this Centaurea (cornflower) flowering, but it has a really interesting seed-head. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it reminds me of owl feathers

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This is a common ‘weed’ in the UK, a Plantain (plantago). The little seeds look like oats:

I don’t know if you remember Ruth’s post about Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) recently, but I had quite a few really big ones in my garden, we call them Rosebay Willowherb here. Though I’ve just been looking it up on Wikipedia, and I might have actually had a related plant, the Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum). Either way, both plants have really great seed pods, and seeds, here are some from mine:

The last plant I managed to get some nice photos of is my small Sage shrub. It has really texturey leaves, quite hairy too when they’re young, and they turn interesting colours if they die too:

I hope you enjoyed those photos, feel free to use any for inspiration, and if you do, it’d be great to see what you make!

Pieces For Greetings Cards

Pieces For Greetings Cards

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It seems like we’ve not had any well-being centre felting sessions for ages. We meet up on a Monday so we lose days when we have a bank holiday; the reception had a bit of a weekend make-over too so was closed one Monday after and August being popular for gigs and festivals has meant less attendance and cancellations too. So, I was feeling a bit impatient to be creative this week. I could have made something with the strips I pieced together last week, but I wanted something a bit more ‘instant’! I need to make some more greetings cards, so thought making pieces for those would be a good way to be productive. This is the first one:

I stuck to Blues and Greens because it’s so messy and fibres/threads get everywhere. This is the 2nd one:

These next two are two halves of one piece I made. I thought it made sense to make a longer one and cut in half. I also made these more green:

I like the blue offcut with cotton nepps on this piece, it was left over from the piece I turned into a notebook cover not too long ago:

They all look very similar when they’re all togther. So, for something a bit different, here’s a piece of nuno I made earlier this year. I used a piece from a silk scarf I got at a charity shop. I think I planned to make a coin purse out of it:

Close Up:

Do you have any ‘quick + easy’ projects for when you want to feel productive and accomplish something?

Works In Progress

Works In Progress

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A while ago when I was making a bookcover from felt strips, I made an extra piece for a future inside piece/sleeve. I usually save my plainer/flatter offcuts for this so they’re not too bulky:

It got me thinking about making another cover. I’ve had some longer offcut strips recently, so I got a few out to see how they looked together and see if they were long enough for the width of a cover:

Which then led to getting out some of the smaller offcuts I’ve saved from Nuno smaples recently, and playing around to see which ones work together. I thought these might be good for 1 side of a small bag or maybe case:

And for the other side:

How durable they are will probably help me decide if they’re suitable for a bag or case. One of our wet felting group members has a nice piece of silk she wants to use for nuno scarves, so a couple of weeks ago when there was only the two of us, we made a couple of samples using 18.5 micron Merino. I know it’s early to be thinking about making scarves for winter, and it was about 32C the day we made them, but we took the opportunity while we had a quiet day! This was my sample piece:

I used a bluey green blend for the white end, and an orange/pink/red blend for the patterned end:

This is the patterned end:

And the texture:

I forgot about the piece and left it in my bag, so it dried with a few creases in! I’ll re-wet it to get them out 🙂 One thing I finished recently is a little case ‘thingie’ made from some old jeans. I wanted to make use of the pocket so thought I’d make a little bag/case with a zip at the top:

I haven’t decided on a use for it yet though!

Cases And a Cover

Cases And a Cover

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I got a couple of cases made this week. I thought I’d made a mistake and forgotten to add the cord at the right stage for this first one, then remembered I wasn’t making a bag after all! I added a piece of braiding/trim and a split ring. This is the felt side:

And the back/fabric side:

I did change my mind about what I was going to do with the piece of felt I used on this next one. If you saw my last post, I’d planned to make a small shoulder bag. But as I was cutting it out, I thought it was too narrow to work that way, so also made this into a case:

I changed my mind about the fabric to use aswell, I wanted something a bit more sturdier, so chose what I think is upholstery fabric:

A while ago, I made a piece of nuno with lots of shrinkage and rippling. I kept looking at it and thinking it’d made a cool book cover, so that’s what I did. This is how it looked after sewing up, but without a book in, outside:

Inside:

I wanted to keep all the edges as they were, and only had to trim off one small part. I haven’t decided which side I like best, so here’s one side:

And the other:

I might go over the stitching again, I want it to be secure, but don’t want to zig-zag stitch it as I like how the edges look.

Planning Sewing Projects

Planning Sewing Projects

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I’m sure I’ve said it before, but planning a project – doesn’t seem to matter what kind – always takes at least twice as long as you imagine! I’ve been trying to match felt with backing fabric, zips and cords for small zipped bags or shoulder bags. Sometimes it seems straightforward. I cut a piece of felt in half and found a piece of fabric to match. I thought this piece would make a nice bag, so matched some cord too:

I used the same fabric for the other half of the felt piece. I think I’ll add a zip to this, but don’t have one to match yet:

The fabric seems perfect for both pieces of the felt. But when I was moving things around, I placed the pieces next to each other differently and suddenly they didn’t seem to match!

Luckily I’ve got these photos to refer back to, though the pieces won’t actually be next to each other on the finished bag. I thought I’d found the perfect combo of backing fabric, felt, zip and cord for the next bag project:

I’m not quite so sure when I put the zip and cord on the back of the felt, but let me know what you think?

These two pieces don’t seem to match, but put together, I quite like them:

I had some fabric with purple in it, the piece wasn’t right, but putting it close to the felt made me think I might need something more purple:

When I was looking through my fabric pieces, I found some upholstery samples I got a while ago:

These ones either look like ink stains, or birds on a branch, it changes each time I look!

I’m not sure I have the exact fabrics I need yet, which can only mean a trip to the fabric shop is well needed 🙂

A Few Recent Things

A Few Recent Things

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I know I said I’d decided not to make anything specific for the craft fair, but I was thinking about the comments I get and questions I usually get asked, and one thing which people often say is that they’d love to have a go at felting if they had the time. When I made the practice felting videos recently, even though I was being conscious of going slow to demo properly, both the layout and felting only took about 15 mins each, so I thought this might be a good ‘selling point’. So I put together a few small fibre packs, spent some time editing the videos to speed them up, copied them onto my phone and thought I’d take my tablet with some tutorials and do a special offer to go with the packs. I did get some interest, but even though it was a really cloudy day, you could barely see anything on my tablet or phone from the glare! Best laid plans and all that!
If you remember, the camera battery had run out before the end on both videos. I redid the wet felting process one, and took the piece from the video with me. I don’t know why, but it looks like it has been scrunched in a box in these photos! Maybe it got creased on the washing line.

I do like the light turquoisey blue nylon fibres, especially on the pink:

Close up:

I took some sari silk to the well being centre a few weeks ago. I’d cut the pieces to take a while ago, so I’m not sure if this green piece is from a sari I’d already used. They have a few different areas of pattern and I’ve not had the whole pieces out for a while. It actually looked like quite a plain pattern, but the texture makes it look a lot busier:

It rippled quite ‘deeply’:

Close up:

A while ago (so long I can’t remember when!) Tracey sent me a beautiful piece of silk. I only got around to trying that out recently too. I only managed to get one decent photo of it:

I love the way it felted, and I think I’ll try a piece with some gooseberry or lichen wool to match the green parts, see how different it looks. Thanks for the silk, Tracey, it’s gorgeous 🙂

Finished Bookcovers, Unfinished Purses

Finished Bookcovers, Unfinished Purses

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I actually finished a couple of notebook covers this week. The first one is the landscape piece I showed cut out ready for sewing. This is the front:

And this is the back:

I think every time I use ‘scene’ type pieces for book covers, I tell myself to make the top and bottom ‘sections’ bigger next time, because I always have to compromise over what gets cut off. I always forget! But, then I can use those nice pieces for something else, like part of a collage book cover! I tried to make this next one nice and bright, you might remember me choosing some of the pieces back in February:

And I did make a start on it in March, and then put it away for a while. I realised last week that I was going to be hot, sweaty and miserable no matter what, so I may as well just try to be a bit productive and get my sewing machine out and finish the cover:

Other side:

This is the inside, with some hand dyed cotton fabric as lining:

Front and back opened out:

I bet a hat made like this would look great! I still haven’t manged to get any further on some purses I cut out, but I did get a photo of them: